Well, look at that. It’s gift-giving season, just as the mountain of 2018 cookbooks has finally drawn itself up to its full height:

World-wandering books that let you armchair-travel at the same time, books that embrace the sweet life of baking, books that let us dream of weekend cooking projects and books that help us get dinner on the table on a weeknight.

At a time when recipes are a mere Google search or app away, cookbooks are still a publishing force. National sales have been rising for several years, market researcher the NPD Group reports. (This year’s blockbuster is “Magnolia Table” by Joanna Gaines.)

Jason Kennedy, book buyer for Milwaukee's Boswell Book Co., observed that sales here have become more diverse — fewer of the bigger releases by well-known authors, more of the smaller titles by first-time authors. And food literature is growing, he said. "The Best American Food Writing" is one such title that's selling well.

A number of customers buying cookbooks don't actually cook all that much, Kennedy said; they're buying the books to study the recipes and take in the photos.

"If they keep putting out beautiful books, people are going to want to put them on their shelves," Kennedy said.

Cookbooks also offer the value of turning to a trusted, tested source for recipes, and the sheer pleasure of reading an author’s distinctive voice. (And it’s so much easier to turn past a page of narrative to get to a recipe instead of wearing out your scrolling finger on a tablet or smart phone.)

Don’t forget the opportunity for spin-off gifts — the uncommon or fancy pantry item that has to be tracked down or ordered online, a needed gadget or appliance, a special bottle of wine to go with dinner or spirits for use in that dessert recipe you spotted.

And don’t feel guilty if you buy a book for yourself while you’re at it. That’s just self-care.

Books offer looks at a chef's life in Canada, African-American recipes, the food of Spain's Catalonia region, restaurant-worthy recipes from Austin, Texas, and recipes from the Philippines.(Photo11: RIck Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

FOR A SENSE OF PLACE AND PEOPLE

“Matty Matheson: A Cookbook” by Matty Matheson

It’s the writing, not the food, that’s salty from Matty Matheson, the larger-than-life host of Viceland shows “It’s Suppertime!” and “Dead Set on Life” and the chef of Parts & Labour in Toronto.

Liberally seasoned with ... let’s say, colorful language, Matheson’s book (Abrams, $35) illustrates the story of his life through recipes and handsome photos of food and places while offering a loving look at his family from the Canadian Maritimes. That means there’s everything from instructions for cooking a lobster to recipes for family-style broccoli-chicken cheddar curry casserole and something called bologna bowl. And, of course, restaurant dishes like cassoulet, venison tartare and fried pig face.

It’s a funny, touching and endearing book in Matheson’s voice with recipes to make tonight or to aspire to.

Barcelona, the capital of Catalonia, is one of the world’s most popular vacation destinations, thanks at least in part to the food. The author of this book (Clarkson Potter, $30), a native of Catalonia who’s now the chef-owner of Barlata in Austin, Texas, provides clear recipes and tips for evocative Catalan small bites like patatas bravas; main dishes such as toasted-rice paella with shrimp; and desserts including Catalan custard. And bridging Olivella’s current life in Texas and his past in Spain is a recipe for a chorizo burger.

“The Austin Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from Deep in the Heart of Texas” by Paula Forbes

And speaking of Austin and travel destinations with food as a draw: Paula Forbes, a Madison ex-pat who lives in Austin and reviews and reports on cookbooks, has written one of her own. Forbes compiled recipes and techniques from beloved Austin restaurants and exhaustively tested them in her own kitchen so readers can successfully make them, too.

Been wanting to try your hand at smoking brisket? Forbes has detailed instructions for that, plus recipes for Tex-Mex favorites such as Bob Armstrong Dip (queso with meat and guacamole), brunch dishes like migas, and drinks including horchata and batch margaritas.

Because Austin has no shortage of finer dining and food trucks, Forbes includes what she calls new Austin classics, such as oxtail pappardelle with rutabaga from Italian restaurant Juniper and beet fries from food truck East Side King.

“I Am a Filipino: And This Is How We Cook” by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad

People in the United States are familiar with Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Korean, Laotian, Indian and other Asian dishes, but how well do they know Filipino cuisine, the food of America’s second-largest Asian population?

Ponseca, owner of popular Maharlika and Jeepey in New York, makes a well-rounded introduction to it in this book (Artisan, $35). She and Trinidad, her chef, provide context alongside recipes, noting the influences of Spain, Mexico, the United States, the Middle East and others on the food of the islands.

Recipes bear the defining sour, sweet and funky flavors of the cuisine, in dishes such as stew-like adobos and soups that could brighten even a Wisconsin winter.

“​​​​​​​Sweet Home Cafe Cookbook: A Celebration of African American Cooking”​​​​​​​ by Albert G. Lukas and Jessica B. Harris

This collection of recipes (Smithsonian Books, $29.95), many from the cafe at the National Museum of African American History in Washington, D.C., makes clear the contributions of African-Americans to America’s cuisine and shows how food is always and forever its own melting pot of influences.

Besides images of sticky pork ribs and other dishes, the cookbook includes historical photos and backstories, driving home that a culture’s history and its food are inseparable. Recipes’ origins are noted, like stewed black-eyed peas from the agricultural South, and Louis Armstrong’s red beans and rice from the Creole Coast.

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A greatest-hits volume of cakes and other desserts, an encyclopedic volume of Nordic recipes and recipes from a Detroit pie shop-cafe are options for bakers in 2018.(Photo11: RIck Wood, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)

FOR BAKERS

“​​​​​​​Sister Pie: The Recipes & Stories of a Big-Hearted Bakery in Detroit”​​​​​​​ by Lisa Ludwinski

When people talk about a re-energized Motor City, they’re thinking of places like bakery-cafe Sister Pie. The owner of the socially conscious shop has written a cookbook (Lorena Jones Books, $25) and, as you’d expect, there are craveable sweet pies and savory hand pies galore, including sour cherry-bourbon pie for summer and cranberry-crumble pie for the fall. And more: recipes for sweets, like gluten-free buckwheat chocolate chip cookies and vegan, gluten-free brownies; breakfast items including roasted asparagus, potato and chive waffles; and salads, too. And, because the Polish pastries are so beloved in Detroit, there’s an alternative recipe for paczki filled with maple coffee cream.

This one’s for the lover of all things Nordic and for advanced and aspirational bakers. Nilsson, the chef of renowned Fäviken in Sweden, is exacting in his instructions for the recipes he’s compiled for this encyclopedic book (Phaidon, $49.95). Clear instructions are especially key when there are relatively few photographs, as in this book.

Besides an entire chapter on breads created with rye flour, made slightly different in every country, Nilsson covers buns, rusks and crackers; porridges and sandwiches; sweets like kringle, vanilla cream buns and marzipan layer cake; plus sweet soups, jams and cordials. It’s a fascinating deep dive into the baking culture of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

“​​​​​​​Food52 Genius Desserts: 100 Recipes That Will Change the Way You Bake”​​​​​​​ by Kristen Miglore

“Genius Desserts” (Ten Speed Press, $35) is a greatest-hits compilation in the vein of the Genius Recipes column (and a previous book) from the Food52 website. Here are defining recipes of famous bakers and pastry chefs like Rose Levy Beranbaum, Nick Maglieri and Claudia Fleming, conveniently in one place. These are recipes that work, a great resource for a beginning baker or one who just would like the ultimate recipe (like cocoa brownies by Alice Medrich) without further trial and error or Googling, please and thank you.

The book holds dead-simple recipes like Nigella Lawson’s One-Step, No-Churn Coffee Ice Cream, and some that require more steps but are oh, so worth it, like Rose Levy Beranbaum’s trick for more deeply flavored fruit pies.

FOR WEEKNIGHT INSPIRATION

Kimball, formerly of “America’s Test Kitchen” and Cook’s Illustrated magazine, knows a thing or two about usable cookbooks, and “Tuesday Night” is certainly that: lovely photos of each dish, recipes kept to one page, clear directions and the aim of getting tempting flavors on the table quickly on a weeknight. The key, Kimball says, is relying on bold ingredients instead of long cooking to develop flavors, such as smoked meats, fermented sauces and bright herbs and spices.

“Tuesday Nights” has chapters with titles like “Fast,” “Faster” and “Fastest,” the last being dinners ready in less than 30 minutes, like spaghetti carbonara. Besides turning to pastas, eggs, fish and quick-cooking cuts of meat like pork tenderloin, and soups and other one-pot dinners, the book recognizes some nights just call for pizza (three-cheese), tacos (chile-chicken) or burgers (Cuban-spiced).

Turshen’s idea is an interesting one: Offer complete menus for all occasions — card night, Passover seder, a relaxed get-together over tacos, a birthday lunch — and then ideas for what to do with the leftovers that make the second take just as appealing. After a vegetarian “steakhouse” dinner, leftover charred broccoli with capers and lemon can be turned into fritters, topped with sour cream and a dash of hot sauce.

The cherry on top is seven book-ending lists — of things to do with leftover snacks (pretzel-crusted chicken with mustard sauce) or leftover rice (brown sugar rice pudding), for instance, plus Turshen’s recommended kitchen tools and ingredients.

“​​​​​​​Solo: A Modern Cookbook for a Party of One”​​​​​​​ by Anita Lo

Because dinner for one should be just as joyous as dinner for more, New York chef Anita Lo has compiled a book of compelling and approachable recipes that waste neither ingredients nor time. Besides dishes with meats and fish, Lo offers vegetable-centered main dishes such as twice-cooked sweet potatoes with kale, mushrooms and Parmesan. Dessert for one? But of course — chocolate pain perdue, for instance.

Recipes are easily doubled, should there be a guest or the household grows to two. Lo, who operated the well-regarded Annisa in Greenwich Village until 2017 and was an “Iron Chef America” winner, peppers the book with valuable tips and brief vignettes that will take readers along with her to Vietnam, Alaska or France.

FOR DEVOTEES OF COOKBOOK ROYALTY

Chef Yotam Ottolenghi in “​​​​​​​Ottolenghi Simple: A Cookbook”​​​​​​​ (Ten Speed Press, $35) pares down his Mediterranean dishes mostly to 10 ingredients or fewer, and includes dishes that can be made in 30 minutes or so, like cauliflower, pomegranate and pistachio salad. But not all. Slow-cooked lamb shoulder with mint and cumin, which is 12 ingredients plus salt and pepper, calls for marinating the meat four hours or overnight, then roasting for 6 ½ hours. But the result, as usual with Ottolenghi, is memorable.

Part-time Parisian Dorie Greenspan in “​​​​​​​Everyday Dorie: The Way I Cook”​​​​​​​ (Rux Martin, $35) offers up her share of French-leaning recipes for lunch and dinner, like mushroom-bacon galette, but flavors come from all over, as in chicken marinated in citrusy ponzu. And of course the famous baker serves up recipes for sweets, such as triple-layer parsnip and cranberry cake.

Ina Garten’s “​​​​​​​Cook Like a Pro: Recipes & Tips for Home Cooks”​​​​​​​ (Clarkson Potter, $35), spun off from her Food Network series, offers suggestions gleaned from her years as a caterer — how to make flavors pop, how to plate food so it looks its best (wide, shallow bowls, not deep ones, for instance), how to arrange a home bar for guests and more. She buttresses tips with recipes drawn from a world of flavors, like lamb and chickpea curry or creamy blue cheese grits.

RECIPES

This pie is from the winter repertoire of Lisa Ludwinski, author of “Sister Pie” (Lorena Jones Books, $25) and owner of the Detroit bakery by the same name.

Sweet Potato Coconut Pie

Makes one 9-inch pie

Filling:

1 pound sweet potatoes

2 tablespoons (¼ stick) unsalted butter, melted and cooled

¾ cup packed light brown sugar

¼ teaspoon ground cardamom

½ teaspoon kosher salt

2 tablespoons fine yellow cornmeal

½ cup full-fat canned coconut milk

¼ cup heavy whipping cream, room temperature

6 large egg yolks, room temperature

Crust plus:

One 9-inch crust, extra blind baked and cooled (see note)

1 large egg, beaten

½ cup large flake coconut, toasted

First, roast the sweet potatoes: Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Scrub sweet potatoes and wrap them in aluminum foil. Poke a few holes through foil and into sweet potatoes with a fork, and transfer them to a baking sheet. Place baking sheet in oven and bake 40 to 60 minutes, or until you can smoosh the foil package with your oven mitt.

Remove from oven and place on a wire rack. When cool enough to touch, carefully remove skin from sweet potatoes. Transfer sweet potato flesh to a food processor or blender and puree until smooth. This step can be done up to 2 days in advance; store sweet potato puree in an airtight container in the fridge.

Lower oven temperature to 325 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Make filling: In a mixing bowl, combine the sweet potato puree with the butter, brown sugar, cardamom, salt, cornmeal, coconut milk, cream and egg yolks and whisk until well blended.

Place the blind-baked shell on the parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush crimped edge with beaten egg. Pour sweet potato filling into pie shell until it reaches bottom of the crimps. Transfer baking sheet with pie on it to oven and bake 40 to 50 minutes, until edges are puffed and center jiggles only slightly when shaken.

Remove baking sheet from oven and transfer pie to a wire rack. Let cool 15 minutes, then decorate perimeter of pie with the toasted coconut. Allow pie to fully cool for another 4 to 6 hours.

Store any leftover pie, well covered in plastic wrap, in refrigerator for up to 2 days.

To extra blind bake crust: Freeze a rolled and crimped 9-inch crust in a metal pan for at least 15 minutes. Preheat oven to 450 degrees with the rack on the lowest level. Remove crust from freezer and press a square of foil that is slightly larger than the pie shell onto the crust. Fill crust with dried beans up to the crimps and place pan on baking sheet. Transfer sheet to oven and bake 25 to 27 minutes, then remove from oven. Peel back foil to expose the crimps, keeping beans and foil on center of pie dough. Brush crimps with the beaten egg and return baking sheet to oven for 5 to 7 minutes, or until crust is deep golden brown. Remove sheet from oven and transfer to a cooling rack. After 6 minutes, carefully remove foil and beans.

Cauliflower is both roasted and raw in a salad from Yotam Ottolenghi’s “Simple” (Ten Speed Press, $35). It can be part of a potluck buffet or served alongside roast chicken or another meat at dinner.

Cauliflower, Pomegranate and Pistachio Salad

Makes 4 servings

1 extra-large cauliflower (1 ¾ pounds)

1 small onion, roughly sliced (¾ cup)

1/3 cup olive oil (divided)

Salt

1 ¼ cups roughly chopped parsley

½ cup roughly chopped mint

½ cup roughly chopped tarragon

Seeds from ½ medium pomegranate (a mounded ½ cup)

1/3 cup shelled pistachios, lightly toasted and roughly chopped

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 ½ tablespoons lemon juice

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

Break two-thirds of the cauliflower into florets, roughly 1 ¼ inches wide, and add these to a separate bowl with the cauliflower leaves, if you have any, and the onion. Toss everything together with 2 tablespoons oil and ¼ teaspoon of salt, then spread out on a large parchment-lined baking sheet. Roast in preheated oven about 20 minutes, until cooked through and golden brown. Remove from oven and set aside to cool. (This step can be done up to 4 to 6 hours in advance.)

While cauliflower is roasting, grate remaining one-third cauliflower.

Once roasted vegetables are cool, put them in a large bowl with remaining oil, the grated cauliflower, the herbs, pomegranate seeds, pistachios, cumin and lemon juice, along with ¼ teaspoon salt. Toss gently, just to combine, then transfer to a platter and serve.

*****

Chocolate Cloud Cake, a flourless cake, was a creation of the late food writer and cooking instructor Richard Sax.(Photo11: James Ransom)

This flourless chocolate cake in “Food52 Genius Desserts” (Ten Speed Press, $35) is by the late writer and cooking instructor Richard Sax. Whipping some of the egg whites and folding the resulting meringue into the chocolate makes a lighter cake that collapses in the center. The center then is filled with even airier whipped cream. Sax said the cake has “intensity, then relief, in each bite.”

To make the cake, preheat oven to 350 degrees, with a rack in the center. Line bottom of an 8-inch springform pan with parchment paper. (Do not butter pan or parchment.)

Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl set over but not touching gently simmering water in a saucepan. You can whisk it occasionally to help it along. When it’s melted, remove bowl from heat and whisk in butter until smooth.

In two small bowls, separate 4 of the eggs. In a large bowl, whisk 2 whole eggs and the 4 egg yolks with 1⁄2 cup of the sugar just until combined. Slowly whisk in the warm chocolate mixture. Whisk in the Cognac and orange zest.

Using a handheld mixer in a separate bowl, beat the 4 egg whites until foamy, just a minute or so. Gradually add remaining 1⁄2 cup sugar and beat until glossy, soft peaks form that hold their shape but aren’t quite stiff. Gently fold about a quarter of the beaten egg whites into the chocolate mixture to lighten it, then gently fold in remaining whites. Scrape batter into pan and smooth the top.

Set pan on a rimmed baking sheet and bake in preheated oven until top is puffed and cracked and center is no longer wobbly, 35 to 40 minutes. Be careful not to bake cake beyond this point.

Let cake cool in pan on a rack. Center of cake will sink as it cools, forming a sort of crater. Let cake cool completely on a rack.

To make the whipped cream, whip cream, powdered sugar and vanilla in a large bowl with a handheld mixer until billowy, soft (not stiff) peaks form.

Using a spatula, fill the sunken center of the cake with the whipped cream, swirling the cream to the edges of the crater. Dust top lightly with cocoa powder.

Run tip of a knife around edge of cake, carefully remove sides of pan, and cut into wedges to serve.

Store any leftovers airtight in the refrigerator — they won’t be very presentable, but they’ll taste the same.